Page 149 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

R. STkNUIT: 17th-CENTURY GOLFCLUB HEADS FOUND DURING UNDERWATER EXCAVATIONS
(a)
years in similar salvage digs in Amsterdam but are not yet published .
The club heads from the wreck of the Kennemerland
These artefacts, (similar to the above), are described by Christopher Dobbs (1 991).
The club heads from other sources in the Netherlands
Fourteen other club heads, all metallic, have been found in the Netherlands (Table 1). Unless indicated otherwise, all of these were chance discoveries or of uncertain provenance.
The significance of the finds from the two VOC wrecks
The significance of the finds needs to be exam- ined in the light of: (a) VOC trade; (b); leisure activities of Dutch citizens abroad; (c) the his- tory of colfimplements in the Netherlands in the 17thcentury; and (d) export of the sport from the Netherlands and its introduction in Eastern Scotland whence it spread to the whole of Britain and, ultimately, the rest of the world.
VOC Trade
It seems unlikely that the ‘brass irons’ could have been part of the ship’s cargo. Should that have been the case, then they could either have been part of the kleinheeden, the small items that were periodically sent on an experimental basis to the Asian market as the counterpart, in a way, to the Oostindische curiositeiten or raariteijten, the collector’s items highly prized by European amateurs for their cabinets de curiositks, or have been aimed at the expatriate market. However, no reference to any trade in colfequipment or colfballs in the VOC records of the period of the Lastdrager has been found by this writer.
Such a small trade, had it existed, would not of course have been of any financial importance to the Company and in no way comparable with the well documented, very substantial trade in ‘featheries’ (golf balls made of sewn leather and filled with tightly packed feathers) which were a t the time exported in vast quantities from the Netherlands to Scotland by private traders.
Leisure activities
If the colfsloflen, as is probably the case, were part of the personal luggage or private trade
Figure 5.
Dutch titles. (a) A unique example of a mid- 17thcentury golfclub whose stock is not care- fully made but obviously just cut from the nearest bush (Brongers Collection. Photo: Flehite Museum, Amersfoort). (b) Coifbeing played on land c. 165&1670. (c) Coifbeing played on the ice c. 1800 (Flehite Museum, Amersfoort).
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